“Democ­ra­cy has tak­en root in our coun­try and in our re­gion, and with it have come peace and po­lit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty. But all this will be lit­tle more than the shift­ing sands of il­lu­sion, if we do not take de­ci­sive mea­sures to strength­en the moral fi­bre of our na­tion. In this con­text, it is le­git­i­mate for us to ex­am­ine the root caus­es of crime and cor­rup­tion…” Open­ing ad­dress by Pres­i­dent Nel­son Man­dela at the Busi­ness Ini­tia­tive Against Cor­rup­tion and Crime, Au­gust, 15, 1995. This could be a speech de­liv­ered in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The Covid-19 pan­dem­ic has sup­pos­ed­ly cre­at­ed a world with a new nor­mal. It is as­sumed that T&T is part of this trans­formed glob­al vil­lage. Yet, in the area of cor­rup­tion, it is the same sto­ry­line. Just look at the episode of the ship­ment of gaso­line by Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Paria) to Venezuela, that oc­curred amid our Covid-19 lock­down. On March 26, 2020, per­mis­sion was grant­ed by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty for Venezue­lan Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez, As­drúbal José Chávez Jiménez, Juan Vi­cente San­tana, Ale­jan­dra Basti­das, Manuel Jiminez and Ma­jor Ken­ny Jiminez to en­ter TT.

On March 27, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, met with Ms Ro­driguez and Mr Chávez Jiménez. The rea­son for the meet­ing was to dis­cuss the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. Dr Row­ley made it clear that at the time of the meet­ing, Mr Chávez Jiménez was not the Pres­i­dent of Petróleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA). Dr Row­ley did not lie. Mr Chávez Jiménez was on­ly so ap­point­ed on April 27, 2020. Of course, at the time of the meet­ing, Mr Chávez Jiménez was a mem­ber of a re­struc­tur­ing team at PDVSA, a com­pa­ny with which he en­joyed a long as­so­ci­a­tion. In 2004, he served as ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Com­merce and Sup­ply of PDVSA. As of 2005, he was ap­point­ed di­rec­tor of PDVSA and di­rec­tor of Cit­go (a sub­sidiary). In 2007, he was in charge of the Vice Pres­i­den­cy of Re­fin­ing, Com­merce and Sup­ply of PDVSA. In 2015, and 2016 he was ap­point­ed Pres­i­dent of Cit­go. It is un­der­stand­able that the sud­den­ness of the vis­it may have pre­vent­ed Dr Row­ley from know­ing these facts.

The very next day, March 28, af­ter the sur­prise vis­it, Paria said that ES Eu­ro Ship­ping SA (ES Eu­ro), a com­pa­ny reg­is­tered and based in Gene­va, Switzer­land, ap­proached the com­pa­ny to pur­chase gaso­line des­tined for St Eu­sta­tius. ES Eu­ro owned by Wilmer Ru­per­ti (a close as­so­ciate of Nicolás Maduro), has six to­tal em­ploy­ees across all of its lo­ca­tions and gen­er­ates $755,034 in sales (USD). It, how­ev­er, con­tract­ed to buy 150,000 gal­lons of gaso­line from Paria with a car­go val­ue of over US$ 7 mil­lion.

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The Al­dan, the ves­sel trans­port­ing the gaso­line, would ap­pear to have been head­ing in a di­rec­tion oth­er than St Eu­sta­tius when Paria con­tact­ed ES Eu­ro. They in­formed them that the gaso­line was go­ing to Aru­ba. This de­vel­op­ment took place con­trary to the fact that Aru­ba pur­chas­es its fu­el sup­plies from the US Gulf Coast.

An amend­ed con­tract was hur­ried­ly pre­pared, af­ter the orig­i­nal con­tract was ex­e­cut­ed and per­formed, to dic­tate that the gaso­line would be sent to Aru­ba and that there would be no de­liv­ery to any coun­try un­der sanc­tions (such as Venezuela).

The Paria gaso­line deal is a poor re­flec­tion of the new nor­mal and ap­pears to be a man­i­fes­ta­tion of our post-colo­nial lega­cy in busi­ness trans­ac­tions. There is no ev­i­dence of cor­rup­tion, but rather at the very least, un­be­liev­able naive busi­ness con­duct on the part of Paria.

The gaunt­let must be thrown down at the feet of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC). Cor­rup­tion is the bane of this na­tion. Cor­rup­tion Mat­ters. The pro­tag­o­nists of the elec­toral dra­ma must both suc­cinct­ly elu­ci­date, their firm com­mit­ment to an­ti-cor­rup­tion mech­a­nisms that would see T&T rid it­self once and for all, of the cor­rup­tion pan­dem­ic for which we are yet to dis­cov­er a vac­cine since 1962. No more tooth­less In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion. No more in­ef­fec­tive Pre­ven­tion of Cor­rup­tion leg­is­la­tion that would al­low a de­ci­sion-mak­er to sim­ply walk out of a room as proof of pro­bity, where a de­ci­sion is be­ing tak­en that would pro­vide a fi­nan­cial ben­e­fit to the de­ci­sion-mak­er and/or fam­i­ly mem­bers. No more An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tion Bu­reau. The time is now for rad­i­cal surgery on the ex­ist­ing state in­fra­struc­ture for curb­ing cor­rup­tion. Not­ing find­ings of a Unit­ed Na­tions Of­fice on Drugs and Crime (UN­ODC) re­port, He­len Dray­ton has sur­mised that cor­rup­tion is cost­ing this na­tion bil­lions of dol­lars (Cost of Cor­rup­tion, Au­gust 30th, 2015). While her re­flec­tion was on the pe­ri­od dur­ing UNC’s gov­er­nance, TT at that time was ranked 72 out of 198 na­tions in the Cor­rup­tion Per­cep­tion In­dex (1 be­ing the least cor­rupt). For 2019, the rank­ing moved neg­a­tive­ly up­wards to 85. It would be in­ter­est­ing to note the views of Ms Dray­ton, at the cusp of a Gen­er­al Elec­tion, with sim­i­lar tim­ing as in 2015. So the chal­lenge to the UNC and PNM is to place in the pub­lic space, their clear com­mit­ment to fight­ing cor­rup­tion and give us a choice as to who de­serves our vote now or our dis­dain in 2025.

“When you see that in or­der to pro­duce, you need to ob­tain per­mis­sion from men who pro­duce noth­ing - When you see that mon­ey is flow­ing to those who deal, not in goods, but in fa­vors - When you see that men get rich­er by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t pro­tect you against them, but pro­tect them against you - When you see cor­rup­tion be­ing re­ward­ed and hon­esty be­com­ing a self-sac­ri­fice - You may know that your so­ci­ety is doomed.” Ayn Rand